“Finding some ways you’d like to involve the team in your process could be a good place to start”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

I work on the marketing team, where most individuals do not understand how to collaborate with designers. They view designers as production, and I am the sole designer in the company. Many of my colleagues believe they are capable of design work and often use Canva to quickly create designs. As you can imagine, this typically doesn't result in high-quality work. Furthermore, project timelines are often not planned realistically.

This lack of understanding often leads to miscommunications and inefficiencies. Despite being the only designer, I'm frequently expected to churn out designs at a pace that’s not feasible. This, coupled with unrealistic timelines, creates a stressful work environment. I believe there’s a need for better understanding and respect for the design process in the team.

As a designer working in a marketing team, how can I earn respect for my skills? Additionally, how can I make others understand the significant contributions that design can make?

Katie Cadwell, co-founder of branding studio Lucky Dip and The NDA Podcast:

People not valuing creativity is unfortunately a hurdle most of us hit. The need to justify the value of what we do. We often have to educate clients, sometimes even our families — but it’s tricky to be in that position within your own team. There are a few different points raised in your question that I’ll break down.

‘... individuals do not understand how to collaborate with designers’

What does collaboration look like to you? Have you thought about how that would work?

Whether it’s group crits, weekly WIP sessions or better handover documents. It’s easier to suggest small things that can aid collaboration than saying ‘there isn’t any’, so finding some ways you’d like to involve the team in your process could be a good place to start.

‘... expected to churn out designs at a pace that's not feasible’

This is one to take to your senior management. No one wants their employees to burn out. I’d have a frank conversation about unrealistic timelines, and the impact of that on you, your health and your ability to produce great work.

Some people have a hard time understanding how long creative can take, especially if you’ve been delivering work up until now. Being able to show how long you need can be really powerful. Take a previous project or task as an example, and step out what an ideal timeline would look like for you. Time you’d like for research, to come up with ideas, how many team reviews… Then draw up a timeline that compares the two so they can see the shortcomings.

“Many of my colleagues believe they are capable of design work…”

Is there an appetite within the team to learn more? Try suggesting you attend workshops tailored to marketing teams – Canva has a great event series. It could get your colleagues excited about creativity, and begin to educate them on the power of good design. Put together a Friday afternoon presentation showing projects you love (or hate!), post creative podcast episodes or inspiration in the general Slack channel. Think of it as a sly education in design.

Once there is a better understanding of great creative, you could do an audit of all the content currently being created. Use it as an opportunity as a wider team to pull out inconsistencies or areas to improve.

These are all small changes you can make, because it’s not possible for someone to ‘value design’ overnight. I hope some of these help, but if not, there are people out there who will value you and your work off the bat.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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